


But Young Men Think It Is And We Were Young Or, Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead

by executrix



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:39:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After V-J Day, the War Monument at Duke's Denver is re-dedicated</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Young Men Think It Is And We Were Young Or, Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead

THEN (August 1945)  
Stewing in full academicals in the summer was bad enough. It wasn’t a patch on stewing in full mourning during that most ambiguous of celebrations. Victory in Europe had been followed (although not quickly enough for some) by Victory in Japan. The war was over, which meant that many soldiers would be coming back and many wouldn’t, to be commemorated on a sort of annexe to the War Monument. 

Generally, Paul envied Bredon for having entered into the manly estate of long trousers. Today, Bredon envied Paul for having to wear only his shorts, knee socks, and a white Aertex shirt with a black armband, while Bredon sweltered in a suit, starched shirt, and black tie. 

Lady Peter Wimsey sighed, and leaned toward the mirror to apply her Cyclax lipstick, reputed to be the favorite of Princess Elizabeth. Helen always managed to find uncomfortable rooms for them when they stayed at Bredon Hall. She moved carefully, as she was down to her last pair of silk stockings. She had one pair of nylon stockings at home, but otherwise it would have been lisle or gravy browning for this solemn occasion.

Harriet blinked. What she saw in the mirror was still there. Then it wasn’t. Then it reappeared. 

“Hullo, Jerry,” she said. “G.K. Chesterton sent round Christmas cards with a sketch of himself in his winding sheet captioned, ‘I am late for my own funeral.’ You seem to be doing rather better.”

“Hullo, yourself, Aunt Harriet,” Viscount Saint-George said cheekily. “And who are these handsome chaps?”

“My sons, Bredon and Paul. There’s a third one, Roger, who is only young and is at home with his Norland Nurse.” 

Bredon put out his hand. Saint-George tried to take it, but his hand dissolved and Bredon’s went straight through. “We were awfully sorry to hear that you were killed,” Bredon said politely. “We were proud as anything that you were a hero, of course.” 

“Compared to a lot of chaps, I was no sort of a hero.”

“You got the DSO!” Bredon insisted. 

“More for having the bad luck to die than for doing anything splendid,” Saint-George said.

“What’s it like, dying?” Bredon asked, as Harriet tried to silence him. Inquisitiveness may have run in the family (and Denver may have teemed with ghosts) but some queries are simply impolite.

“When it happened, I was jolly ready for it,” Saint-George said. “And that’s enough of that, young feller-me-lad. I only hope there won’t be another war for you to find out directly.” 

“Bredon, go and fetch your father,” Harriet said. “I expect he’ll be in the library, it’s one place he’s safe from Gerald and Helen…Tell him…tell him that we’re all quite all right, but I need him here at once. Say ‘Cousin Mortimer,’ he’ll understand.”

“Err, if you don’t mind, I should love to see Uncle Peter, of course, but…well, I should rather that we didn’t tell the Mater and Pater that I’m here. Here, after a fashion. I don’t think they could see me, and if they did, they wouldn’t take it in the right, errr, spirit.” 

Paul tugged at the sleeve of Harriet’s black crepe costume (fortunately pre-war, he would have had his work cut out for him tugging at a Utility model). “Mamma, Bredon ought to do what Uncle Viscount says even though he’s dead because he’s a grownup, but oughtn’t he to tell the Duke and Duchess because if he doesn’t it’s sneaking? And Papa says that we ought never to lie or sneak because a liar and a sneak can’t be a gentleman.” 

Harriet sighed once again, with an altered motivation. “It’s very difficult being a grownup, and it involves a great many things that are difficult to explain to children. Please take it on trust that just this once you can…reveal less than the whole truth.”

“If you were a Christian being persecuted under Nero you wouldn’t have to tell where the other Christians were,” Bredon told his cadet. “You could just go right ahead and get eaten up all alone.” 

“Bredon, **please** don’t terrify your brother. And please do go and fetch your father before…” she faltered, wondering if references to disappearance would be tactless.

“What about the Dowager Duchess?” Harriet asked Saint-George. 

“Oh, I’ve seen Granny loads of times, she’s probably sick of the sight of me. I shall wave at her during the service, of course.”

Peter arrived, walking briskly a few yards behind Bredon’s hurrying feet. He wore a black suit and black tie, with a Homburg under his arm. “Dashed silly to carry a hat that serves no purpose other than doffing,” he said. “What’s wrong, Harriet?” 

Before Harriet could say anything, Saint-George gave a small, embarrassed wave of his hand in Peter’s direction.

“Oh, my dear chap,” Peter said, and, after a moment of uncharacteristic silence, “Mine eyes smell onions. Errr…back for the service, I suppose.” 

“Like that kiddie in the American book,” Saint-George said. “Lurking about in the back hearing a load of codswallop about how marvelous he was.”

“Or like Mapp and Lucia,” Harriet said. 

“Oh, I read those,” Saint-George said. “Awfully funny! And I read all of yours, of course, Aunt Harriet,” Saint-George said. “I quite look forward to ‘a Vane for Valentine’s Day’! The latest one, where Marianne Templeton reads the letter that arrived after her fiancé pranged…I’m not ashamed to say that I blubbed. Based on me, a bit, eh?”

Harriet shrugged. 

“And jolly good to see Marianne getting more to do, it gets tiresome if the girl doesn’t do anything but get kidnapped and then get rescued just before a fate worse than…”

“Without immodesty, I think I can say that your uncle found me a help meet unto him in detection. At least from time to time. So why should one surmise that a Great Detective’s sister would be utterly useless?” 

“One does feel better about the afterlife,” Peter said, “If there are books there. And if anything your taste seems to have improved.”

“It’s because books don’t weigh much, especially if you can put them down on something…Well, you see, I’m sort of here, sometimes, and the rest of the time noplace. If I’m lying in cold obstruction and rotting, I don’t know about it, and there isn’t any thick-ribbed ice and so on. But I haven’t quite figured out all the rules, and there’s no one to explain it. I do see other…chaps like me…from time to time.” 

“I daresay tombstones wouldn’t say ‘Rest in Peace’ if there weren’t other alternatives,” Harriet said. 

“The older ones are frightful snobs, seem to have it in for everyone from the twentieth century. Even the ones here, havin’ been the heir apparent doesn’t cut any ice with ‘em, I might just as well have been a tradesman forever halloin’ about an unpaid butcher’s bill. I went back to Varsity, just to see, but I felt the old place had moved on without me. It’s designed for that, isn’t it? Fellows come and go, but they don’t get attached to the place. Or it doesn’t get attached to them.”

“But…the dons!” Harriet said.

Saint-George shrugged. “Well, if you count them!” 

“Or at least the scouts,” Peter said.

“I’ve been up to Town lots of times,” Saint-George said. “Awful what silly asses people of themselves in nightclubs, only I’d never noticed before when I was up to it myself and squiffy. I’ve taken in all the shows, although sometimes I’ve got to be nippy on my pins if I sit down on an empty seat and then at the interval someone tries to sit down in it. Best I can work it out, no one can see me unless they cared enough about me for me to be somehow still in their noggins. Whether I can touch things seems to depend if, you know, if there’s someone about to, sort of solidify me. Like Cook and blancmange. I can generally manage to turn the pages. Can’t be bothered if the book isn’t up to much, though.”

“Can you move things about from place to place?” Paul asked. 

“Only sometimes,” Saint-George said. “Still, I’m not giving up. There was a chap at school with me, Annesdale-Parker, who was a frightful weed. I think he smoked gaspers. But damned—sorry, boys, dashed—if he didn’t win the House Cup for cross-country. We’d see him out all hours, in his singlet and gym shoes, practicing his running. See, Uncle Peter? I’m being a good influence. Never give up. Never say…”

Peter cleared his throat. “The cars have been ordered for ten a.m.,” he said. 

“Oh!” Saint-George said. “I’ll see you there!” 

Peter had been desperately worried whether he would be able to read the Lesson during the service or give his speech during the Dedication without an unmanly show of grief. In the event, he felt so much lighter-hearted that he had to remind himself to look serious enough. He decided that he must have struck the proper balance when, at the reception in the Green Drawing Room at Bredon Hall, he overheard two American Air Force officers commenting on how he had displayed the storied British Stiff Upper Lip.

“These would have served Claudius and Gertrude right,” Harriet said, putting down her plate that had once held Spam canapés and mock banana sandwiches. At least the claret was from the depleted but not vanished cellar. “Though I don’t see how they could have got any colder, even in Denmark.” She looked around to see how Saint-George was enjoying the show. She couldn’t see him, and was saddened that at this, of all times, there weren’t enough people who remembered him to allow him to manifest (at least to the believers). 

However, she was wrong in this. Saint-George was not forgotten, but alibied.

In a remote corner of the servant’s hall, halfway through putting his sponge bag into his portmanteau, Bunter turned around. ”Lord, I thank you for this great blessing,” he said hoarsely. “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is as strong as death. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.” Then he cleared his throat, and in a more normal voice, said “Can’t think why I said it aloud, the Lord who knows all things would know what I meant if I hadn’t.” He frowned, an intent look on his face. “Have you seen Him? Is there a God at all, and is he what we think of or one of those great idols with an elephant head?”

“Don’t know a thing about that, A.C. I wasn’t a very purposeful sort of chap when I was alive, and even less so now. I just seem to drift about, but in an earthly sort of way, no harps and clouds. And, lucky for me, no pitchforks or imps either. If I’d known that…well, you know how careful we had to be, didn’t want to end up in quod and didn’t want to end up in Hades either…I would have kicked up my heels a bit more.”

“I’m glad you didn’t!” Bunter said. Then he frowned again. “Still, I suppose it’s to be expected, the Day of Judgment hasn’t come yet.”

“Bit of a sell, really, having thirty thousand years in Hell more or less not because of how horrible your sins were but because of when you were born. But, y’know, time doesn’t work the same way. Please don’t be angry with me for, well, not coming to see you all this time. Sometimes I’ll come to myself and see a newspaper and find that it’s been months since the last time I noticed anything.”

“You know how people say that they’d give anything to see someone again? It really is true. No point putting conditions on it.”

“Don’t be too glad!” Saint-George said. “I mean, don’t do anything desperate to come and join me!”

“No fear!” Bunter said. “But it would be odd, me getting older and you staying the same.”

“Two ways to look at it,” said Saint-George. “P’raps I’m like Madeira, matured by a bit of a shaking-up. Sent all the way ‘round the Equator.”

“And the other way is that you’ll still be the empty-headed layabout you were before?”

“Oi! Draw it mild! The RAF wasn’t exactly Butlin’s Holiday Camp, y’know. The funny thing is, we’d the devil of a time finding ways to spend any time together, before, and if I’d come back I’m sure I would have married and things would have got even more impossible. At least like this it’s more impossibly possible, if you see what I mean.”

“I do see—I’d got the trick of translating what you said into English—but how do I know you won’t get tired of me, more and more of a slowcoach, and go off and find someone younger?”

“How do I know you won’t go off and find someone more, well, solid?”

“I never would,” Bunter said.

“You’d best not!” Saint-George said. “Or I’ll haunt you!”  
(November 1945)

“You’ll just have to bear up,” Harriet said. “We all hope that your mother will live forever, but…she simply won’t. And though she doesn’t need a nurse or a companion, the Dower House is falling down about her ears, and she does need a…major domo who can take care of things. Old people become inflexible, I’ve seen it over and over again in my father’s parishioners. She’ll be far happier with someone she thoroughly knows and approves of than a stranger.”

“After all these years, I don’t see how I can do without Bunter,” Peter said. “Two wars and countless calamities have passed by under his supervision.”

“The terrifyingly efficient Miss Minchin” (Harriet’s secretary, late of Girton) “has a terrifyingly efficient steam laundry take the washing away and bring it back in impeccable state. I don’t suppose she’s as good a photographer as Bunter, but then neither is Beaton. If you require an adjuvant in detecting anything outside the marital walled garden, I’m sure she could do that too. If we are not dining out or going to a restaurant, the terrifyingly temperamental Chef Louis prepares our meals, muttering all the time that his light is hidden under a bushel when most of the time there’s no one to recognize his genius. Two-thirds of the boys are at school most of the year, and I don’t think Bunter should spend too much time with Roger in any event, he’ll only teach him to pick locks and make invisible ink that ruins the upholstery, just like the other two.” 

(January 1946)  
Bunter sat up abruptly, in his small bedroom under the Dower House eaves. He had not heard any footfalls, but there had been something like the elaborate clearing of a throat, a whistled note or two of “Lili Marlene,” and a rattle of silver against china.

There was a cup of tea on the nightstand (a china drum brought back from the East from some collateral Wimsey or other). It still steamed against the air of the room which, like Fanny Price’s little white attic, lacked a fire.

Bunter, his heart pounding, took a sip and addressed the skirting-board. “Like the Bourbons, you have forgotten nothing and learned nothing,” he said. “You still can’t brew up worth a damn.”

“I say….” came a plaintive voice from behind the door. Bunter laughed, and then they both did.

PERORATION: TO-DAY (1947)  
If you arrive at Duke’s Denver (presumably by train, for where would you get the petrol?) , and you are in quest of a good pint and food of a quality that would be surprising anywhere in an impoverished country where everything is rationed and cheese is pared in sad cold kitchens, you must stop at The Three Mice. 

If you inquire as to whether the dishes that appear before you are cooked by the publican’s wife, you will be told that the publican, who was once in good service, has no wife. The herbs are of his own growing, and the country eggs are fresh (as the rooster will remind you if you lodge there overnight). A legacy from his last employer, and a loan from his previous employer (soon repaid—the business is smartly managed) permitted him to take up the rendition of hospitality on a more generous scale. 

He is a dab hand with mechanical things so, no matter how often the rattly film projector at the parish hall breaks down, he can fix it, and show the film too.

More often than strict chance would provide, the film is “Wuthering Heights,” although, as he changes the reels, Mine Host is known to mutter “It’s not a patch on the book.”  
Naturally it is dark in the parish hall when films are shown, which could explain what seems to be a flash of blue-grey, or even the shimmer of a gold wing collar-pin, in the vicinity of the projector. 

But perhaps you have not called for a pint, or even a half. It is possible that, if you have ordered one of the last half-a-dozen of bottled ale behind the bar, and the publican is busy garlanding your ploughman’s lunch with the chutney he bottled during what passed for last summer, you will hear a clinking in the cellar. And perhaps the publican will—not grin, his demeanor is far too correct for that—but smile slightly and say something about “a job of work at last.”

**Author's Note:**

> _“In my youth,” said Wimsey meditatively, […] I got to know the Song of Songs pretty well by heart. Look it up, Bunter; at your age it won’t hurt you; it talks sense about jealousy.”_
> 
>  
> 
>  _“I have perused the work in question, your lordship,” replied Mr. Bunter with a sallow blush._ (“The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran”)


End file.
